Just beforehand, a pulsating montage of clear-cutting shows the Stampers partaking in an Olympic feat of tradition, defiance and gluttony.I like novels that aim high and strive for greatness and this is such a book. We see trees the length of school buses felled by hand and yanked up mountainsides, and Quentin Tarantino has called the film’s climactic logging accident one of the best single movie scenes of the early ‘70s. Even if the film portrays their antisocial tendencies more as a wellspring than a curse, the logging scenes testify to their work as a terrifying religion. As Kesey’s novel puts it, these are the descendants of men with “itchy feet,” who migrated further and further into the Western wilderness, chasing a pasture some imperceptible shade greener. Through five stellar lead performances, Oregonian survivalism feels as spiritual as it does illogical. And Lee Remick as Viv is stunningly wistful as Hank’s wife realizing she is the crew’s actual outsider. Michael Sarrazin excels as black-sheep hippie brother Leland reentering his estranged family’s orbit. Then, in an Oscar-nominated turn as cousin and family cheerleader Joe Ben, Richard Jaeckel’s sunny disposition perfectly masks the film’s shocking conclusion. In a body cast that holds his busted arm 90 degrees off his body, Henry Fonda leers and jeers unforgettably as the influential family patriarch, Henry. Where Sometimes a Great Notion unequivocally thrives, though, is in enlivening Stamper family dynamics, drenched in Olympia lager and 4:30 am maple syrup. (Granted, this didn’t stop Notion from being the first film ever shown on HBO in 1972.) What’s more, one can sense from the classical, painterly filmmaking why Notion eluded lasting fame relative to other 1971 films, which saw The French Connection, Klute, Shaft and A Clockwork Orange help shape New Hollywood aesthetics with hip, provocative urban settings. Composer Henry Mancini’s bluegrass score practically frolics, while Newman’s irrepressible charms endow Hank Stamper with righteous irascibility, as he chainsaws union desks in half and essentially leaves Wakonda to rot while on strike. The Stamper house, built by Universal Studios on the Siletz River near Kernville, is more attractive than the novel’s half-drowned monument to stubbornness. Meanwhile, Kesey bestows Oregon nature with an almost alien power to inspire and madden the Stampers.īy comparison, much of the film’s ambience is almost jaunty, as though the production couldn’t help but be impressed with its own riches of talent, source material and location. In the space of one page, the reader might plunge through three timelines of genealogy and perspective with unfilmable fluidity. In Kesey’s opus, both the setting and style are torrential. The film opens as though washed landward by the Pacific, an aerial shot combing the Central Oregon coastline while country music groundbreaker Charley Pride croons the gospel sentiments of “All His Children.” As establishing shots go, they seldom get more stunning, but we immediately see the movie veer in its own tonal direction. The Stampers have turned scab in the face of a timber strike, and one need only consult the family motto-”never give a inch”-to understand why they’ll keep on cutting, dammit. That, or maybe Paul Newman bought your uncle a beer in Newport during the summer of 1970, per the myriad boozy stories surrounding the film shoot.įifty years old this month, this Paul Newman-directed drama unravels the pathological grit of the Stamper clan, a family of loggers in the fictional coastal enclave of Wakonda, Oregon. With One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (based on another Kesey novel, of course) ranking among the state’s most famous film productions, only devotees of Oregon film history or ‘70s cinema likely recall much about Notion the movie. While Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion is regarded as perhaps the quintessential Oregon novel, its 1971 film adaptation is more like a forgotten little brother. Sometimes a Great Notion (Biggest Trailer Database) By Chance Solem-Pfeifer Decemat 9:00 pm PST
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